Jack David Zipes is an American retired Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, who has published and lectured on the subject of fairy tales, their evolution, and their social and political role in civilizing processes. According to Zipes, fairy tales "serve a meaningful social function, not just for compensation but for revelation: the worlds projected by the best of our fairy tales reveal the gaps between truth and falsehood in our immediate society." His arguments are avowedly based on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and more recently theories of cultural evolution.
Zipes enjoys using droll titles for his works like Don't Bet on the Prince and The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood.
He completed a PhD in comparative literature at Columbia University. Zipes taught at various institutions before heading the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch at the University of Minnesota. He has translated the complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.
Courtesy of Wikipedia.